This invention relates especially to wreaths, and like decorative items made with evergreen boughs, such as balsam boughs. Such decorations are used, for example, as Christmas decorations, and for grave side ceremonies. The shapes commonly employed in such decorations include the round wreath, the Cross, and the grave blanket.
The round wreath, as conventionally made, is built on a round wire ring frame which is available in various sizes. The Cross, as conventionally made, is built on a frame made of two wooden slats which have been nailed together.
The processes for making decorative items with the wire rings, or the nailed slats, are the same. A handful of bough branches are placed on the ring or slat, and are manually held in place while a piece of wire is wound tightly around the boughs, and the ring or slat. Another handful of bough branches is placed 3 to 4 inches down the ring or slat from the first handful, and the wire is tightly wrapped around them. This process is repeated until the circumference of the ring, or the elongated surface of the slats, has been covered with boughs.
Using the above process, each wrapping of the wire around, for example, the round wire frame requires that the end of the wire be passed under the wire frame and through the central opening defined by the round wire frame. Accordingly, the worker is required to regularly position the article being built away from any solid working surface in order to wrap the wire around the boughs which are being secured to the frame at that point in time.
The requirements for passing the end of the wire entirely around the frame are less demanding for construction of the Cross, wherein the end of the wire can be maneuvered around the end of the cross, but the requirement to wrap the wire around the frame is still cumbersome.
In making the grave blanket, a woven wire is typically used as the frame, and extends generally the full length and width of the blanket, typically four feet wide by seven feet long. The boughs are woven into the frame and secured with wire, about one entire surface of the frame, about its length and width. This, too, is a slow, labor intensive process.
It is an object of this invention to provide a bough holder which facilitates securing the boughs to the holder, and thereby making decorative bough display articles.
It is an object to provide a bough holder which has a receiving pocket dimensioned to receive the bough branches and to confine them while the boughs themselves are being secured to the bough holder.
It is another object to provide the bough holder with fastening means on the receiving pocket, whereby the fastening means are adapted to receive wraps of intermediate portions of a continuous strand fastener, and thereby to secure the boughs to the bough holder, without having to maneuver the strand fastener behind the bough holder.
It is yet another object to provide such a bough holder which is easy and simple to work with, and which can be employed to produce the decorative bough display articles faster and with less stress and strain on the worker.
It is still another object to provide a bough holder which employs fewer boughs in the construction of a display article.